The Madras High Court on Friday directed a committee led by the Health Secretary and consisting of experts from the Fire Services Department to come up with a comprehensive plan by February 9 for creating evacuation mechanisms, such as construction of ramps, in all hospitals and educational institutions to prevent casualties during fire accidents.
The first Division Bench of Chief Justice Indira Banerjee and Justice M. Sundar also ordered that the State government should not allow construction of a hospital or an educational institution without ensuring adequate evacuation facilities in buildings housing them. The orders were passed on a public interest litigation petition.
Suggestions sought
Since Additional Advocate General C. Manishankar reported to the court that the PIL petitioner Jawaharlal Shanmugam had been made a member of the committee, the judges asked the latter to make his suggestions at the meetings of the committee so that a well-thought plan could be devised.
While presenting his case before the Bench, the petitioner said a ramp that connects three different buildings at the Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital here was an excellent model to be emulated at other government as well private hospitals in the State so that patients tied to stretchers could be evacuated safely during fire accidents.
Though Health Secretary J. Radhakrishnan was highly interested in evolving new ways and mechanisms to address the issue of safety, Mr. Shanmugam said, the interest shown by a single bureaucrat would not be of much help when other stakeholders were not equally enthusiastic about an effective solution.
Though a government counsel said that possibilities of installing fireproof elevators could also be considered, the petitioner said such elevators would have to be run on battery power as electricity connection would be down during fire accidents. Therefore, they might not be of much help since they would not be able to accommodate many people at a time.